Thinking Strategically as a Way of Being

By Tom von Gunden

At ThoughtCore, we often refer to the concept of “thinking strategically.” You may wonder, “Is that the same thing as ‘strategic thinking’?” Great question. The answer may reveal a key challenge or need within your organization, perhaps within yourself as a leader or key contributor.

Here’s how I think about it

If you are doing strategic thinking, then you must be thinking strategically, and vice versa. Right? Yes, but …

Consider “strategic thinking” as a thing that someone does. By contrast, consider “thinking strategically” as a part of what someone is. (Yes, I recognize that things are getting a bit heady here!) In that shift from doing to being lies the challenge in making your organization more consistently strategic at all levels, in all decision-making scenarios.

“Strategic thinking” as a doing activity suggests a type of thinking that can be applied as an overlay to other kinds of thinking. You can put it on and take it off – like a hat. As in, “Up until this moment, we had been thinking about tactics or operations. Now, we’re thinking about strategy.” Or reverse it: “We have been talking about the strategy. Now, let’s talk about the execution.” Happens all the time, right? The siphoning of strategic thinking into its own stage or moment, and often conducted only by certain players tagged with the responsibility for doing it. Those players are usually close to the top of the organization’s decision-making hierarchy.

Always-On Strategic Thinking

The subtle shift in phrasing to “thinking strategically” conveys something much less staged, something that is always on and, hopefully, happening everywhere, not just among those at or near the top. That degree of constancy should be a strategic stickiness goal. Throughout the organization, there should rarely be any decisions for which the decision maker is not thinking strategically within role. That needs to be happening despite whatever immediate operational concerns or near-term pressures are present.

Critically important, the always-on trait of thinking strategically should be as conscious and intentional as possible. This is especially true of any growth stages in which the organization is working to hone this brain muscle more widely. Ultimately, anyone making a tactical decision anywhere in the organization should be expected, if asked, to identify the higher order corporate strategies being addressed.

Fostering a Way of Being

So, how do you get there as an organization? How does thinking strategically become habitual at all levels? Consider the following starter recommendations:

1. At corporate or senior leadership levels, favor transparency and visibility about strategies, current and potential. Only when leaders and contributors deeper into the organization have visibility into the entire strategic landscape (or as much as constraints around confidentiality allow) can they be aware of the degree to which their tactical decisions may have broader strategic implications.
   

2. Encourage and support “ambidexterity of thinking” – i.e., the ability to make decisions in any role with the “left hand” of tactics and execution working in awareness of and in concert with the “right hand” of strategy.
   

3. Invite and incentivize “what if?” questioning and decisioning at all levels. This is particularly important for functional area contributors for whom pondering the unknown or unpredictable is typically ignored in executing on the known and immediate. Thinking strategically for them requires an awareness of how the moment at hand and the decisions made within it may become part of an organizational trajectory much more fleeting than today’s strategic direction may suggest.